Alzheimer Disease vs. Alzheimer's Disease

[bigneonglitter]

Why is everyone all of the sudden ommitting the apostrophe s (-'s) from every diesease? Like Alzheimer Disease instad of Alzheimer's Disease or Raaynaud Disease instead of Raynaud's? (Yeah, this is kind of randon.) My path professor mentioned something about it during the beginning of the year, but he never explained why the change is was made.

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[Rafa]

Interestingly enough, if you type the former into Google, you get 71x10^6 results, but it suggests the apostrophic spelling. If you type the latter, you get slightly *fewer* results (58x10^6).

 

[Gut Shot]

Here's what I've heard in pathology residency:

The rule of thumb now is that if the disease/syndrome is named after the person who discovered it, the apostrophe is dropped. It magically goes from possessive to sounding plural. Alzheimer's therefore becomes Alzheimers.

If, on the other hand, the disease/syndrome is named after a described sufferer of said disease/syndrome, the apostrophe remains. An example would be Lou Gehrig's disease (although most people call it ALS these days).

Proponents of the change essentially argue that diseases/syndnromes cannot "belong" to their discoverers, so there is no need to make the name possessive. As for the latter cases, I reckon it would just be cruel to steal Lou's apostrophe.

All in all, this whole thing is pretty stupid.